Category Archives: Iran

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As noted in a 2008 report by a Christian human-rights organization, “Apostates from Islam to another religion suffer a host of serious abuses from their families, communities and nations.” These renegade Muslims may well face the death penalty in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Sudan, and other forms of oppression in many other Muslim societies.

The reason for this systemic violation of religious freedom is, unfortunately, religious. Most classical schools of sharia law consider apostasy from Islam a crime punishable by death. A hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad is quite clear on this: “If somebody [among Muslims] discards his religion, kill him.” The implication is that Islam is a religion with free entry but no free exit. Continue reading →

An Iranian woman blinded with acid by her suitor for turning down his marriage proposal spared him at the last minute from being blinded too as punishment for his crime, Iranian media reported on Sunday.

Ameneh Bahrami lost her sight in 2004 when Majid Mohavedi poured acid onto her face after she spurned his offers of marriage.

In 2008, a court sentenced Mohavedi to be blinded in both eyes for taking away Bahrami’s sight, using the principle of retribution permitted under Iran’s Islamic law.

“I have been trying for seven years to get the qisas (retribution) sentence, but today I decided to pardon him,” Ameneh was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

Ameneh said the international interest in the case was one reason for deciding to drop her demand for the sentence of retribution to be carried out.

“It seemed like the entire world was waiting to see what we did,” she said.

Rights group Amnesty International urged Iran not to inflict the punishment.

After seventeen days Iranian celebrity and dissident Pegah Ahangarani has been released from Iranian custody, German-language radio Deutche Welle reports.

Hamid Hekmat, Ahangarani’s expatriate uncle, confirmed Wednesday his niece has been released on bail for $83,000. The charges against her remain unclear.

“Yesterday evening the family was told that they she could be brought home now. She is free at last,” Hekmat said. But Ahangarani’s uncle was unable able to give precise information about the condition of the actor, writer and film-maker. Continue reading →

A Japanese heavy machinery manufacturer said it has cut business ties with the Iranian government following a report that its cranes have been used for public executions.

The company’s announcement came several days after United Against Nuclear Iran President Mark D. Wallace published an op-ed in Los Angeles Times where he names the Japanese Tadano company as one of several companies exporting cranes to Iran.

…As part of the campaign, United Against Nuclear Iran published on its website a list of seven international manufacturers exporting cranes and other heavy equipment to Iran, along with pictures of the cranes being used for public executions.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution however, the Islamic Republic has been hell bent on its anti-Iranian agenda. The regime fears all symbols of pre-Islamic Iran. In recent weeks, this anti-Iranian agenda has manifested itself in removing wall paintings that depicted the Epic stories of Shahnameh (Book of Kings) in Mashad, the removal of the statues of another Iranian legendary figure, Arash in Sari and now they want to remove the statue of Ariobarzanes in Yassuj.

Like this:

Last month, Youcef Nardarkhani, an Iranian pastor convicted of apostasy for leaving Islam, had his death sentence for apostasy upheld and confirmed by the Iranian Supreme Court.

On July 3, Pastor Youcef’s lawyer reported that his case was being returned to the Revolutionary Tribunal of Gilan Province and that the Supreme Court would annul the sentence if Youcef renounced his faith.

Iranian Christians are emphasizing, however, that reports indicating Pastor Youcef’s case has already been annulled are misleading, as the annulment is dependent on him recanting his faith and embracing Islam (sources include Middle East Concern, Mohabat News and Present Truth Ministries).

Western Political correctness refers to them as “extremists.” But their statements and points of view can only be considered as “extremist” because of their extreme brutality. Lately some of the higher clergymen of Iran express themselves in a more “Quranic” way than ever. And show a striking setting with Spain, but not, as usual, with Spanish Al Andalus, but with nowaday’s Spain, which, in their eyes, is a kind of helpless orphan abandoned to their fate in the infidel lands being harassed by “the more arrogant powers” in the world.

A few weeks ago, during the full swing of the so-called ‘Movement 15-M’, Iran was swarmed by statements of high officials of the regime, linking the protests in Spain with the “waves of freedom brought by Islam to the Iberian peninsula for centuries“. A brigadier general stated to a semi-official Iranian agency, that “the Spanish release” was just one example of the “pursuit of freedom” by the Europeans, “a freedom like the one, coincidentally, brought the Muslim invasion of the peninsula“.

Ayatollah Khamenei. Image via Wikipedia

Thus, Al Andalus is still an example for the liberation of the oppressed Europeans: “Similar to the expansion of Islam into Europe via Spain for several centuries, the growing waves of arousal appear to spread from the Middle East and North Africa to Europe across the country, where thousands of demonstrators have begun concentrations in Spain for a few days“(ND). It is, ultimately, the new European salvation that comes through the Gibraltar Strait.

The very Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khamenei, had already spoken about the “waves of awakening” that crash not only the Arab world, but also the European democracies. Those waves are just encouraging imitations of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, a move that will reach “the very heart of Europe” and will permit the inhabitants to get rid of the “economic and cultural policies of the United States and the Zionists” (ND). Continue reading →